Between Kumuyi And A Daring Pakistani Woman

 By Banji Ojewale

The 1978 book, I Dared to Call Him Father, by Bilquis Sheikh, sacked the staid and sacral stance of the slumbering world with its contribution to the generational interaction between Muslims and Christians. Bilquis was an aristocratic Pakistani Muslim whose conversion to Christianity plunged her into a whirlwind of rebellion, rejection and ridicule at the hands of family and society. Her book, with Richard Schneider, is the granular account of her epic battle to battle those who challenged her daring moves in a conservative community.

*Kumuyi

Her religion doesn’t admit God as a personal father. She writes: ‘’No Muslim, I felt certain, ever thought of Allah as his father… Wouldn’t it be sinful to try to bring the Great One down to our own level?’’ Now, Bilquis did not only call God her Father; but also, she went ahead to follow her deep-seated convictions to become a follower of Christ, sacrificing convenience and convention. She spoke of threats from kinsmen to visit her with honour killing.

I Dared to Call Him Father had initial worldwide sales running into hundreds of thousands of copies, and easing into history as ‘’one of the most popular Muslim-Christianity conversion books of the 20^th Century.’’ It has been translated into several global languages including Chinese, French, Italian, Spanish, Korean, Arabic and Persian.

Therefore when Pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi, General Superintendent of the Deeper Christian Life Ministry, DCLM, took his Global Crusade with Kumuyi, GCK, to Pakistan between late October and early November 2025, many observers spoke of a deja vu experience. The international evangelist, not a novice to the world of valorous adventures for the Gospel of Christ, was treading where a woman trod decades earlier and came out with ‘’an enthralling story of faith and courage in the face of danger and difficulty.’’

Mankind has moved on since. We no longer allow fruitless religiosity to destroy our shared humanity. The plea of China’s Mao Zedong to all men and women to ‘’Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend’’ has been accepted by all. So, Pastor Kumuyi was warmly received in the Muslim land of Pakistan, he also returning with triumphant narratives.

In the Islamic-majority country for the first time, the respected African cleric preached Christ as the Saviour and only Solution to the protracted existential crisis man is struggling with. He was in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city boasting a population of 14.8 million. GCK teamed up with the home-grown Eternal Life Church and Isaac Television, for the 3-day programme that revealed how this great land of Asia has transformed from a closet into an open society with open arms waiting for new beneficial teachings and civilization paradigms.

Tens of thousands of Pakistanis thronged the meeting grounds to watch Kumuyi pray, to receive salvation, to be healed and to receive deliverance from ignorance. In the clergyman’s own words after the trip, ‘’What a divinely ordained-time we had in Pakistan! The Crusade, Ministers’ Conference, and Sunday Worship Service were powerfully saturated with salvation, new commitments to Christ, profound healings, and mighty deliverance for countless precious souls. By God’s Grace, across the events, we saw - Total Attendance: Over 58,000 participants. Total New Converts: Over 33,000 souls committing to Christ! We rejoice for every single soul.’’

One of the most stirring gatherings in Pakistan was recorded on Day 2 of the GCK. During his sermon with the topic, The long-awaited freedom for the man, the Nigerian preacher said God wants man to realize that he is critical to His plan to reclaim man from the mire of sin and despondency. He said: ‘’The world is not upright, because man is not upright. If God fixes man into a state of righteousness and uprightness, his environment and deeds will also be righteous and upright…Make man upright, and release him into the world upright…No uprightness for man, no uprightness for the world!’’

Kumuyi referred the audience to the book of Romans 7:24: on his own man is wretched; incapable of self-redemption, he’s heedlessly heading for a shipwreck. He said God intervened by sending Christ to contain the cruise to calamity. Christ’s mission is to save man, who would in turn be used to deliver universal man. Pastor declared: ’’If God doesn’t save man, man can’t save the world.’’

The renowned evangelist of holiness gave an illustration of man’s criticality in fulfilling the plan of God. A man of God, he said, was preparing a Sunday message. But his young son wasn’t allowing him full concentration. So to keep him away the busy pastor tore a paper with the map of the world into pieces, and asked the lad to go and fix them back, expecting the task to take the boy’s attention from him. But the boy was back in a few minutes, to his dad’s surprise.

“How did you do it?’’ He asked. The son said: ‘’When you took the paper to tear it, I saw the picture of the man on the back of the page. I don’t know the world; but I know the man. So I fixed the man at the back, and got the world fixed also.’’

The General Superintendent of DCLM said God is also piecing broken man together through faith in Christ in order to mend the cracked world. He told the Pakistanis that his GCK was going all over the world to present this good news of the Divine purpose to spiritually rejuvenate men and women for service to God and prepare them for Heaven. Kumuyi’s devotional, Daily Manna, has also become a silent evangelist in homes, schools, offices, Police cells, prisons, hospitals and hotels among other places worldwide, delivering this message of Christ to the lost.

Pastor Anwar Fazal who hosted Kumuyi expressed a passionate desire: Pakistan is expecting the Nigerian churchman to visit again next year. He said Pakistani Christians would be praying God to let Kumuyi bring a billion souls to the Kingdom of Christ. One more sign of such warmth was the reception Kumuyi received when he and his team visited Pakistan’s Minister for Human Rights and Minority Affairs, Sardar Ramesh Singh Arora, a non-Christian, whose work is to build interfaith bridges and harmony.

It isn’t a tall order; nor is it an unreasonable anticipation. Already, GCK reaches more than 180 countries, with millions in attendance online and physically and hundreds of thousands decisioning for Christ. All God requires from man is to give Him a listening ear in a space devoid of violence, coercion, religious bigotry and intolerance, as He sends His servants to us with words of hope and peace.

*Ojewale is a writer in Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria.